


and you had every chance (you destroy everything that you know)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Multi, wolves and girls both have sharp teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 12:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: She touches his fingertips and he almost sobs: he’s that starved for it.(He wants her to rend him. He wants it to hurt.)





	and you had every chance (you destroy everything that you know)

_i_.

She touches his fingertips and he almost sobs: he’s that starved for it.

He hides it; of course he hides it. This abominable weakness, his desperate longing for something he refuses to let himself consider. _There's too much of his father in him,_ Snoke says, and Kylo knows it's true; tried to carve it out with a saber buried to the hilt in his father's ribs but it's there, it's still  _there_ and he doesn't know how to cut it from his own heart. And the truth is, too: if there's too much of Han in him there must, conversely, be not enough of Leia. She, at least, has never let tenderness get in the way of doing what needs to be done.

He will be a Jedi like his uncle before him, like his grandfather, like all these men with Skywalker blood and power under their skin, but _Mother please I miss you (don’t go don’t leave me here)_ he’s alone; he’s alone, and his uncle doesn’t trust him not to fall.

Rey trusts him, or she doesn’t trust him but she sees a possible truth in him; it’s enough to bring her here to him, if nothing else.

She touches his hand, and it hurts with how it doesn’t hurt at all: a gentle sweetness, just a brush of her fingers against his, the curiosity of someone who thinks they could learn him. It’s a relief when Luke interrupts them even as it rips him open fresh.

He wants her to rend him. He wants it to hurt.

 

 _ii_.

 _You're like a stray dog_ , Rey says once. _It's embarrassing_.

There was a stray pup once on Jakku. The smaller scavengers threw stones at it—a wild animal, the promise of sharp teeth meeting in your throat, all the fears that stalk the dreams of small prey—and Rey had stormed in, smacked them with her staff until bones cracked.

 _Kill it or leave it alone_ , she'd snarled, and after that, it'd trailed loyally at her heels, half-wild and beaten and hopeful.

 _Go away,_ Rey had said. Half-hearted: the desert is no less cruel to a pup than to an orphan scavenger, and besides, the dog was warm. Soft fur under her palm and sand-rough fingers. _Go away. I have nothing for you._

It’d slept outside her door, and then under her bunk, and then curled full-body around her, wet nose tucked into the crook of her neck. The desert night was cold, and the pup was warm; not tame, but tame enough. She had whole portions more often with a stray cur guarding her haul, a pup standing to her hip and growling at anyone who dared come close. Whole portions, no gnawing ache of hunger; it made it easy to share.

 

(Later, Rey had cracked its skull with her staff, roasted it whole and torn its flesh from its bones with her teeth. Twelve days without portions, and the desperation of the desert: the meat kept her belly full for a week.)

She lets him see it _(I will eat you whole)_ and smiles, sharp, at how he flinches from the memory. Dreams that night of setting her teeth in his throat, crushing his windpipe in one achingly slow increment until he’s nothing but hot blood and wet gasping for breath.

It should scare her. It doesn't.

 

 _iii_.

It’s something he shouldn’t have been surprised by, in hindsight; or surprised only that it’s taken this long.

Snoke is dead; Snoke is _dead_ , in this room stinking of blood and burnt flesh and fear, and Rey is gone, and General Hux is too easy a target for Kylo to resist. He takes Hux by the throat. Flings him, later, throws him Force-solid across the room, and abruptly he’s hard, hideously and embarrassingly hard. His hand on Hux’s throat, except it’s not his hand but his mind that has this grip, and he could kill him with nothing but a twist of the Force: can see his fear, can watch him beg, and it— _oh_ , it—

 _You’re disgusting_ , Rey says, contemptuous, and he knows that already— _he knows that already, knows it down to his bones—_ but he flushes regardless, caught and ashamed by her.

 

He thinks about it again, later—when he’s alone, when it’s nobody but himself and Rey in his head—and he shouldn’t touch, he shouldn’t—Snoke always said to spill his essence would dilute his power—he shouldn’t _touch_ but all he has to do is think of how it had felt to choke Hux speechless and he’s gaspingly, painfully hard again.

It’s the power of it, he thinks; it’s the power and the control. It’s _having._ He’s always wanted and never had, never had just what he wanted in his grasp like that. _You could rule the galaxy—we could rule the galaxy together, could hold it all, could have them bowing to us and our terrible power._ He deserves this, he thinks. Wants it so much he can taste it. He deserves—

 

(He’s very close when he thinks, suddenly, of the battle with the Praetorian guard, of Rey’s back warm and solid against his own. The two of them as one, merging Force-strong so that all her edges were up under his own skin. How she’d grabbed his thigh to balance herself, the touch a casual ownership that she hadn’t even had to consider before laying claim.

 _Ben_ , she says, and it makes his breath catch, a sob in the back of his throat; abruptly the whole rich fantasy is ash in his mouth, bitter on his tongue.)

 

 _You don’t even know what it is to want_ , she says, almost gentle, and he thinks he does know, he’s only afraid to give shape to it—

 

 _iv_.

When she hugs Finn it’s like everything good in the Force: the sunlight, rainwater on her skin, the tenderly pale green of a new bud unfurling.

 _Stormtrooper_ , Ren thinks, scornful, and Rey thinks, _mine._

 

It's hard to stop touching him; there is no room in the Falcon, so many of them in such a tiny space _(so this is the Resistance, just one little ship)_ and everyone is exhausted, battle-worn and bloodied. The girl—Rose, Finn said, her name is Rose—is asleep in a bunk, and Rey and Finn find space on the floor below like they can keep vigil for her, curl in towards each other with foreheads pressed together so they’re sharing everything including hot breath.

Finn sleeps; Rey doesn’t. She watches Leia watch over them all: Connix asleep with her head in Leia’s lap, cheek pillowed on one hand, and Leia touches her hair, shifts her gently _(oh, so gently)_ into a pile of blankets so she can stand and walk among them. Stops in front of Poe, touches her fingertips to his curls.

“Get some sleep, Captain,” she says, quiet, and when Poe looks around for space Rey smiles, shifts over just enough that it’s invitation.

 

In time, Poe kisses her; in the corner of her mind she feels Ren bare his teeth _(you know I pulled his mind apart)_ and it makes her fierce enough to lash out.

 _You’re afraid_ , she says, _weak and afraid of everything you want_ , and it hits true enough that she catches it sting. She’s protective enough to be cruel in this; thinks very deliberately of the way she had seen how Leia had cradled Poe’s face in her hands for a long moment before kissing his forehead, stroking his cheek in a gesture that was neither mother nor lover but something of both.

It's a low blow. Rey knows that as soon as it lands, and yet she can't find it in her to feel regret or shame. He pulled Poe’s thoughts apart, took him trembling to pieces to rip from him the secret of the island. Poe with his soft curls and broad warm hands and dark eyes, Poe with this heart that's big enough to take in Finn and Rey and Rose now too, a heart that beats for the Resistance, and Ren thinks he can _mock_? She'll tear him down. She'll eat him whole.

 

 _v_.

He thinks he’s only dreaming of it until it becomes something more: _Rey_ , and someone—not him— _(someone touching)_ and it’s so gentle it feels like he’s being flayed, split throat to sternum and ribs peeled back to lay his heart bare.

He wakes, trembling. Aching and wet with release, and it makes him furious—it makes him desperate—it makes him disgusted and hard and desperate for it, and he’s still _feeling_ it, Rey’s clean and beautiful joy in this. The Stormtrooper and the rebel scum, a pilot, a mechanic; they're teaching her tenderness and it terrifies him, the way he can feel her breathless and whole. It’s overcrowded: limbs everywhere, a too-small bunk, someone smacks their head on the ceiling and someone else hits their elbow, swearing _(fuck me that hurt—oh buddy we’re gonna, just wait—)_ and then Leia is laughing— _his mother is laughing oh gods it hurts_ —at their noises carrying so easily through the thin and uninsulated metal walls of the Falcon.

 

It’s a bright spark of life. It’s the heart of the Rebellion, and he hates it— _hates it—_

It makes him feel like he’s never been more alone.

 

It happens again. It _happens again (warm breath laughing wide open joy)_ and he sinks his teeth into his lower lip until his mouth tastes of salt and iron. Tries, desperate, not to touch, and _(gods yes your hands hot skin right there Finn please—)_ it makes him hurt, it—he gouges his nails into his palms, scratches sharp lines across his own hipbone. Digs his fingertips into the blaster scar on his ribs until the still-ruined nerves scream with it. Smashes everything breakable in his quarters with a flick of his fingers, and in the sparking, smoking hum of ruined electronics he can still hear her _(Finn please)_ and he’s still hard.

He takes his cock in hand. Strokes himself miserable and aching. When he comes, he can’t tell if he’s feeling his own self-contempt or her contempt for him. It’s both; it’s neither; it doesn’t matter, in the end.

 

_(vi)_

Here they are facing each other, the two of them in the snow of a forest. It could be the beginning or the end or both; it was always going to happen this way. The balance of the Force demanding it.

 _You’re nothing_ , he says, and knows that she sees the lie in it this time, if she didn’t before: she’s slept curled in a tangle of limbs, salt-sweat and skin and the kind of love that tastes bitter in his throat. Built herself from wreckage, Rey and the Resistance both, and if she’s anything she’s a spark that will burn him alive.

 _You weren’t born a monster_ , she tells him _(you only chose to become one)_ and it’s a cold truth but at least it’s a truth; they’re done lying to each other _(you chose)_ and here’s another truth, one he knows without needing to voice it: there’s only one way this will end.

“You’re nothing,” he says again, just to watch her snarl; her anger whipcracks through him and it’s so hot and alive and beautiful he thinks he could die from it if only Rey would come for him with sharp teeth and kiss him exactly like that, kiss him bloody and ruined.

She doesn’t bother replying. Only closes her eyes and draws in a breath that comes from his lungs and then—

 

_she's gone_

 

He’s alone he’s _alone_ and it stings, it stings, he’s always been alone until he wasn’t alone and now the silence in his head is unbearable.

 _Kill it or leave it alone,_ he thinks, an old memory that’s not his to own or remember, and feels himself bare his teeth, hears his own scream like a wild animal trapped and rabid.

 _Yes,_ Rey says, and _I know, Ben_ , and it takes him a moment to hear that she’s saying it out loud.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and holds his gaze, doesn’t look away as her saber drives home.

It doesn’t hurt. He thinks it should hurt, but it doesn’t; it doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just this: her saber sliding point-first up under his ribs to sheath in his heart.

Her mouth is bloody; she leans in nearer and kisses him, gentle and very tender now that she can afford to be, and it’s so very close to what he wants that he thinks, here at the end: he could almost be content with it.

 

 


End file.
